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THE QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES LAUNCHES ITS MOBILE APP
Montreal, September 20, 2017 - The Quartier des Spectacles Partnership has launched its first mobile app. The practical tool is designed to help visitors find their way to the district’s many events and cultural venues. The app also reveals the Quartier’s many facets and invites users to discover points of interest, from famous sites to the Quartier’s best-kept secrets. Called “Quartier des Spectacles,” the app is available for free in English and French from Google Play and the Apple App Store.
To make each visit to the Quartier a memorable experience, the new digital platform provides an abundance of content covering more than 125 topics and locations. The Quartier is shown in all its diversity, including its history, growth, residents, cultural sites and natural features. Users are offered three exclusive self-guided tours with photos, more than 5 hours of audio, and no fewer than 70 testimonials from the Quartier’s residents, workers and influencers.
The app includes a tour of the Quartier showing key sites in a new light, original interviews with people active in the area, and a calendar of shows and current events. It also features a real-time guidance system to make it easy for users to pinpoint their location and destination.
“We are proud to offer visitors a digital platform that will allow them to explore and discover the Quartier in new ways, to better understand and appreciate its history, and give them a new perspective on the people and places that make the Quartier what it is. This new app will reach curious visitors for whom the smartphone is a primary means of accessing information,” said Jacques Primeau, chair of the Quartier des Spectacles Partnership’s board of directors.
“We like creating digital experiences that help us to see things in new ways and suggest new types of relationships with the world around us. We wanted the Quartier des Spectacles app, particularly its content, to be authentic and human. The app aims to engage visitors and residents in an exploration that helps them experience the Quartier differently, beyond its role as a cultural district. It also allows users to see it with fresh eyes, from its glitzy parts to its rough edges, with the people who live there and make it what it is,” explains Geneviève Levasseur, president and creative director of Ingrid Ingrid.
The app includes three guided tours and two thematic explorations:
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KM3, a walk through the works and installations in the current open-air exhibition (August 30 to October 15, 2017);
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Discovering the Quartier des Spectacles, a tour of iconic spaces and cultural venues from 1800 to the present day;
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Scandal! Vice, crime and morality in Montreal, a two-hour tour of the Montreal underground from the 1940s to the 60s (in collaboration with the Centre d’histoire de Montréal);
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Urban Art in Montreal, - to better understand graffiti and mural art (in collaboration with graffiti artist Sino);
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A Community in the Heart of the Quartier des Spectacles, a collection of new testimonials from residents of Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance.
The Quartier des Spectacles mobile app was designed and produced by the Ingrid Ingrid interactive studio. The final product features the work of producer Charles Trahan and user experience developer Mivil Deschênes, as well as developers Kffein, Folklore and Iregular. The Scandal! Vice, crime and morality in Montreal module is adapted from the exhibition Scandale: Vice, crime et moralité à Montréal, 1940-1960, conceived and presented by the Centre d’histoire de Montréal. Audio clips were produced by Antoine Bédard and Éveline Martin-Archambault. The Quartier des Spectacles mobile app was supported by Canada Media Fund.
GUIDED TOURS AND TWO THEMATIC EXPLORATIONS
MORE ABOUT THE QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES – 1 h 15 min
Explore a neighbourhood that’s been exciting and vital since the 1800s. Today, it boasts 80 venues, 8 public squares and 40 festivals. Dubbed the “Red Light District” in the early 20th century, when it was jammed with theatres and cabarets, in the 1980s it started to attract large festivals, a prelude to its emergence of a world-class creative incubator and cultural destination. This guided tour looks at several key places, including Métropolis, Les Foufounes électriques, UQAM’s Centre de design, Place des Festivals and more. Testimonials from experts in history, urban planning and art enhance the experience.
SCANDALE! VICE, CRIME, MORALITY – 2 hours
You are right in the heart of what used to be Montreal’s hottest area: the Red Light district. In the 1920s, Montreal developed a reputation as a wide-open party town! This part of the city was thick with brothels, gambling dens, speakeasies, cabarets, nightclubs and mobster hangouts. Relive the city’s scandalous history by taking a tour of the infamous addresses of yesteryear.
Scandal! is adapted from the Scandal! Vice, Crime and Morality in Montreal, 1940-1960, conceived and presented by the Center d'histoire de Montréal.
KM3 – 2 hours
From August 30 to October 15, 2017, more than twenty new works will enliven the Quartier’s façades, squares, parks, sidewalks and windows. KM3 is an art walk through the Quartier des Spectacles, from its most iconic spaces to some of its least known ones. This walk features immersive, interactive, participatory and purely visual works created specifically for Montreal. The artists, both local and foreign, come from a wide range of disciplines: visual arts, sculpture, video games, interactive design, fashion, dance and architecture. KM3 offers a new perspective on the urban fabric through today’s most innovative public art.
THEMATIC EXPLORATION: A COMMUNITY IN THE HEART OF THE QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES
Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance is a public housing development in the heart of the Quartier des spectacles. Once hidden behind barriers, the complex is now connected to the city. The apartments are home to an incredible mosaic of cultures and demographic groups – young, old, Muslim, Christian, Chinese, Dominican and more. Everyone here has a diverse mix of naighbours. Enter the grounds and explore while listening to the stories of family and community shared by a few residents of Les Habitations Jeanne-Mance.
THEMATIC EXPLORATION: MONTREAL’S URBAN ART
Welcome to alternative Montreal! Are you familiar with Boisbriand alley? Tucked away behind Sainte-Catherine Street, this has long been a favourite spot for graffiti artists and muralists. It’s also the site of the annual Under Pressure festival. According to experts, Montreal is unique because it features every style and type of urban art. Sino, a veteran graffiti artist, talks to us about an art form that’s still misunderstood but increasingly appreciated. A colourful walk that’s even better with headphones!
DOWNLOAD THE APP
ABOUT THE CENTRE D’HISTOIRE DE MONTRÉAL
The Centre d’histoire de Montréal is a municipal museum whose mission is to promote better understanding of Montreal and its cultural diversity and heritage both tangible and intangible. If favours a participatory approach, allowing its expertise to serve residents by gathering their stories and objects for exhibitions and activities. The Centre reveals how Montrealers have shaped the city’s urban environment and defined its identity.
Having developed recognized expertise in the collection and dissemination of testimonials, the Centre d'histoire de Montréal has shown Montrealers little-known chapters of their history, as their fellow Montrealers lived it. The Centre focuses on topics relevant to current concerns – sustainable urban development, diversity, ethics, public morality, evolving values and more. Its website, Mémoires des Montréalais, helps everyone extend their discovery.
ABOUT INGRID INGRID
Ingrid Ingrid is a Montreal-based design studio that creates and develops innovative experiences that challenge everyday routines. By creating playful interactive works and astonishing content, Ingrid Ingrid experiments with, documents and reinvents our relationship with the world around us. For more information, visit Ingrid Ingrid
ABOUT THE QUARTIER DES SPECTACLES AND THE PARTNERSHIP
The Quartier des Spectacles is Montreal’s cultural heart, boasting North America’s most concentrated and diverse group of cultural venues. The district is the year-round host to countless festivals and events, many of which include free outdoor shows and activities. The Quartier hosts innovative urban installations involving cutting-edge lighting design, immersive environments or interactive digital spaces. Year round, the Quartier presents artistic video projections on several building façades. The Quartier des Spectacles is a showcase for new multimedia technology, making Montreal a global leader in the urban exhibition of digital content.
The Quartier des Spectacles Partnership, founded in 2003, is a non-profit organization with more than 60 members active in the district. It is responsible for animating the Quartier des Spectacles by programming cultural activities, managing and animating public spaces, providing distinctive illumination, and promoting the Quartier as a must-visit cultural destination. The Partnership is supported by the Ville de Montréal and the Secrétariat à la région métropolitaine of the Ministère des Affaires municipales et de l’Occupation du territoire.
For more information, visit quartierdesspectacles.com.
Media contact
Marie Lamoureux | marie.lamoureux@quartierdesspectacles.com |
